


You can't bury a planet (but you sure as hell can try)

by iwantcandy2



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fanart, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-01 21:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19186060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwantcandy2/pseuds/iwantcandy2
Summary: It's been months since coming to Earth C, and Karkat still can't pull himself out of the emotional waste disposal. In an attempt to cheer him up, his friends suggest throwing a funeral. Because funerals are fun, right?





	You can't bury a planet (but you sure as hell can try)

**Author's Note:**

> Fanart 1 by [Shacypagelings](https://twitter.com/Shacypagelings) on twitter.  
> Fanart 2 by [wheatiesquares](https://twitter.com/wheatiesquares) on twitter.
> 
> I would like to state for the record that I wrote this before the Epilogue released. And yet somehow I still called shut-in social recluse Karkat. Whoop.

As it turned out, Karkat’s adolescent fantasies were wrong. Being venerated as a god and worshipped by legions of admirers was, in actuality, total shit.

“Yo bro, when was the last time you went outside?” 

“I go outside all the time. I just do it at night, because your sun is too fucking bright,” Karkat growled.

Dave arched an eyebrow and said, “None of the other trolls get all ‘Count Dracula’ over a little vitamin D.”

Right. The other trolls. The whole race of creatures that had developed a society on this planet, who were genetically similar to him but had a completely different culture, history, and shared pool of pop culture references. They were more alien to Karkat than, well, the real aliens he hung around with.

“Those don’t count,” Karkat shot back. “They aren’t real trolls.”

They didn’t have a society founded on violence and culling the weak. Their caste system was practically non-existent, with the hemospectrum mixing freely like a four-year-old’s fingerpainting. All of these were objectively good things, and Karkat didn’t hate them for having a better world than the one he grew up in. It just made it hard to relate. Being surrounded by a bunch of bright, happy trolls, ones who had never seen their friends hauled off for culling or grew up knowing they were fated to be canon fodder in an interstellar war, made Karkat feel like an outsider. He was a remnant from another world.

“Is someone still being a sad sack mopey-face?” Jade called, peeking through the door. 

Karkat sighed and turned off the television. Obviously  _ Dan in Real Life  _ would have to wait until his roommates were done making his life a living hell. Jade vaulted herself over the back of the couch and landed next to him with enough force to jostle the cushions. On his other side, Dave slid into place.

“We aren’t doing this again,” Karkat warned. 

It was no use. For some asinine reason, his hivemates had long ago decided that this was a fun game they could all enjoy despite how much Karkat voiced his protest. Propping a chin on each of Karkat’s shoulders, they began to baby-talk in his ear.

“Is someone being grumpy?”

“Does someone have a case of the butthurt blues?”

“Don’t be sad little Karkitty.”

“We’re here for you, bro.”

“You can’t get rid of us.”

“I told you this is creepy,” Karkat shot back, refusing to look either of them in the eye. “And as common sense would fucking have it, I’m actually not feeling the least bit better.”

“Do we need a group hug?” Jade asked, her ears perking in excitement. 

“Absolutely not.”

“Tell us what’s really bothering you or we’ll hug the information out of you,” Dave threatened.

This was another thing that made Karkat feel like some weird creature escaped from a zoo. Dave and Jade were so affectionate. Maybe it was just them, since they didn’t exactly seem like normal specimens of the human race, but Karkat could never imagine casually hugging and touching any of his troll friends. Trolls scratched and wrestled and bit, but stuff like this? Not unless you were in the pale quadrant.

“Look, nothing you can say or do is going to make me feel better,” Karkat reasoned, “so would you kindly fuck off and let me be miserable in peace?”

“We’ve  _ been  _ doing that,” Jade defended, “but it’s been like a month since we got here, and you just...don’t seem happy.”

“I’m  _ not  _ happy. This place is shit.”

That wasn’t entirely true. In the month since they’d arrived in 7016 Earth C, they’d been given a fancy apartment, food, and all the material goods they could have ever wanted. The residents of this world viewed them as creators and champions, venerated them as deities. There was no expectation to work or run the government or do anything besides exist. All in all, it was a pretty sweet deal. Except it did nothing to alleviate Karkat’s mood.

“Do you guys ever feel like we’re back on the meteor again? Stuck in one place, just waiting for something to happen?”

“No. Some of us actually leave the house,” Dave replied.

“And I was never on the meteor,” Jade pointed out. “But if you’re comparing it to my three-year isolation with no one but consorts to keep me company, I can’t say I relate. This place is way better.”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Karkat grumbled, clawing at his hairline in frustration. 

“ _ Help  _ us understand, dipshit,” Jade said, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “Explain and we’ll listen.”

Dave’s chin was still digging into his shoulder, but he nodded in agreement. His eyes never left Karkat’s face. It was probably meant to be an ironic display of hyper-attentiveness.

“I don’t know, I just...look, this wasn’t what I was expecting, okay?” Karkat said. “I thought after we won, things would go back to normal. I understand that makes me sound like a moron with half a functioning thinkpan, but I think in the back of my head I was expecting everything to work out, you know? After everything we’ve sacrificed, I wanted a happy ending. But this is just more of the same. My friends are still dead, I don’t really belong anywhere, I’m still just a weakling with no cosmic powers.”

“Are you hung up on not being able to fly?” Dave asked, mouth uncomfortably close to his ear. “You know I said I’d give you a lift on the Strider Airways anytime you wanted.”

“I’m hung up on my entire species being dead!” Karkat snarled back. “These new trolls...they aren’t like me. And I understand that’s a good thing, but it sort of leaves me without a place to put up a lawnring, you know?”

He didn’t expect them to get it. But to his surprise, both Jade and Dave nodded.

“Hey, did you know they don’t have Burger King in this place?” Dave spoke up. “Like they have a metric fuckton of places to get food poisoning that are functionally identical to the ol’ BK, but there isn’t actually any place called Burger King that serves artificially smoke-flavored meat.”

“And no one on this entire planet remembers Squiddles,” Jade added. “Like how do you forget something as amazing as Squiddles? But apparently you can, because not even a ratty VHS is left.”

There was a moment of silence as they all thought about everything missing from this new world. This place had no war, no famine, no disease. It was practically utopia. But it still wasn’t home. 

“So you miss Alternia?” Jade asked.

“I guess,” Karkat replied shrugging. 

He knew it was stupid. Alternia  _ hated  _ him. He was a mutant that would have been culled on sight, and he was much better off in this new universe. But Alternia had been where he grew up.

“Hey, how about we throw a funeral for it, then?” Dave asked. “Send the old world out with style.”

“You want to throw a corpse party for a planet?” Karkat sneered.

“Why not? Funerals are for the living, anyways,” Dave shot back. “Like usually dead bodies don’t have much at stake on a sad party in their honor. It’s for the living to have one last chance to feel like pieces of shit that it’s not them in the coffin.”

“I think that’s a great idea!” Jade agreed. “Shit, I think we should throw a funeral for all our old planets. Like get together a bunch of stuff we miss about home, and then toss that junk in a casket and bury it for good.”

When she said it so matter-of-factly, it didn’t sound quite so asinine. Maybe it would help him feel closure over his home planet being a burned-out husk in a different reality. 

“Okay,” he said slowly, “but I’ve never done anything like this before. You fuckers will have to show me exactly what I need to do.”

Dave and Jade were already brainstorming ideas.

 

It turned out that throwing a funeral was really just like a very sad, very shitty party. You needed to invite guests, arrange catering, order supplies. A few sweeps ago, he would have jumped at the chance to take the lead and boss people around. Now, he was much more content to take a backseat, letting Jade’s enthusiasm carry them forward. She was more than happy to take charge, jumping in with her usual canine-abundance of energy. However, she insisted that Karkat help in crafting the guest list.

“Can’t this just be an us thing?” he asked. “I don’t want a bunch of assholes muscling in on my grief territory.”

“Yeah, but I figured you might like Kanaya there,” Jade pointed out, “since she is one of the only other people who remembers Alternia. And if we invite Kanaya, we might as well invite Rose.”

“And I guess Egbert should be there, too,” Karkat muttured. “He was about as mundane and invested in his old home planet as they come.”

The same went for Jane. He’d wanted to invite Terezi, but she was currently off in paradox space somewhere, doing who knew what. 

Jade also included Calliope, since she was another person who remembered and adored the trolls of old, and that also meant Roxy was in it as well. They considered inviting Dirk and Jake, and Dave promised he was totally cool with it and it was like no big deal and he didn’t mind, but Dirk grew up after the old world was already dead and Jake had spent his childhood socially isolated on an uninhabited island, so maybe they didn’t have that much to mourn and Jade assured him it was  _ fine,  _ they didn’t have to come, Dave could cool it. 

They set the date, they made the arrangements, and now all they had to do was follow through. Karkat wasn’t exactly spending sleepless nights in anticipation of the event, but there was a sort of air of finality around it. Like finally when this was all done, he could stop feeling like a black hole was open in his chest. 

In the end, they decided to get two caskets- one for Alternia and one for the human’s world. Jade had instructed everyone to bring items to put in the casket; things they missed. Karkat wasn’t sure exactly what he missed about Alternia. He sure as hell didn’t miss the Condesce, or any of the stuff to do with the military. But that was what most of Alternian culture had been about. He toyed with the idea of putting his trusty sickle in the casket, sort of as a way to say goodbye to his dreams of being a warrior, but ironically that didn’t make him feel sad enough to be appropriate.

The day of the funeral came. The humans wore dark shades, as was the human custom. Kanaya had chosen to accent her black dress with a rainbow colored boa draped tastefully across her bare shoulders. It was probably a nod to the Hemospectrum. Or maybe to being a rainbow drinker. Or maybe it was just a Kanaya thing. Karkat didn’t understand fashion. 

He’d had nothing to wear, but Dave had stepped in and told him he didn’t need to worry about shopping for something, that Karkat could borrow a tux from him. Grateful to be spared the arduous task of acquiring clothes, Karkat had agreed. He had been a fool. The tux Dave gave him was a bright, candy red, making him stand out like a total asshole amongst the more somber shades.

It was a balmy, perfect day. According to the research he had done, it really should have been raining. It was always raining at funerals in movies. 

“Maybe this is a bad omen,” Karkat grumbled. “It’s not too late to call the whole thing off.”

“Bro, just chill,” Dave said, reaching out with one hand to lace their fingers together. “If you need a shoulder to cry on I’m here for you.”

“Fuck off,” Karkat growled back, but he didn’t remove his hand. 

“Hi Karkat,” John said, voice less chipper than usual. “Thanks for inviting me.”

“It was Jade’s idea.”

“Really? Because I very clearly remember you being the one to suggest it,” Dave pointed out. 

Karkat shot him a look full of venom and grimdark. However, it was hard to stay mad when he was supposed to be feeling mournful and reflective. 

By general consensus, everyone had agreed that John should lead off the ceremonies, since he was the friend-leader pal-commander of the bunch. What no one had seemed to think through, though, was how fucking terrible the man was with words.

“Um, so we’re gathered here today to feel sad together,” he began, his stupid little buck teeth protruding from his stupid little mouth. “It’s kind of a bummer that everyone we’ve ever known is dead. But also Bill Cosby was kind of a shitbag in this universe, so now no one has fond memories of  _ Ghost Dad,  _ you know?”

Karkat decided that rather than listen to John prattle on about dumb shit, he’d rather people-watch the other attendees. Calliope was already softly crying, dabbing at her unmoving skeleton cheeks with a handkerchief. Beside her, Jane looked equally miserable, although still dry-eyed. The only other troll in the audience was Kanaya. It struck him how small his circle of friends had become. Not just that almost everyone he had known from Alternia was dead, but that he hadn’t bothered making new friends. Dave and Jade had forced their way into his life, and Egbert still made frequent overtures at friendship that he did his best to discourage. Everyone else, though, he’d purposefully pushed away. He didn’t know anything about Rose, the human his oldest friend was matesprits with. 

He’d done a pretty good job of shutting himself off.

“And now, we would like everyone to place their mementos in the casket” John announced. “Feel free to say a few words as you do. Or, you know, don’t I guess.”

Everyone filtered up and offered their tokens. Dave had developed some of his old selfies, taken in the reflection of Burger King windows, and lowered them tenderly into the Earth casket. Beside him, Rose placed a glass ball and said it was supposed to represent some movie that had sparked her juvenile obsession with magic that didn’t exist in this world. 

Karkat, ever the considerate forward thinker, had thought to bring something for the Earth casket as well. It wasn’t his planet, but there were still things to mourn. He placed his copy of Dane Cook’s  _ Harmful If Swallowed  _ that Dave had lent him and he had never given back. Judging from the playful nudge Dave gave him, he not only didn’t mind entombing the thing in the ground forever, he was also grateful he would never have to hear it again. 

The Alternian casked was significantly emptier. For Calliope, it was a bottle of grey facepaint that she used for her trollsona, and she said something sentimental about how trolls were so uniform on the outside and colorful on the inside like candy, and it was probably very sweet to her but it creeped Karkat out. Kanaya had brought a red lightbulb, which she said reminded her of the Alternian sun, which she missed basking in. Of course she would think that was beautiful and poetic, and not the symbol of blinding pain most trolls saw it as. 

  


Karkat had brought his old husktop, the one he had used while playing SGRUB. It had all his old Trollian logs with his friends and his Alternian websites saved and a bunch of features that didn’t function anymore, hooked up to an internet that no longer existed. The old piece of junk barely booted up anymore, not since the last time he’d taken a whack at programming something, and he’d been using a replacement for a while now. But this...this had all the records of his attempts at being a leader, at all the ways he’d failed his friends. He still read over the old conversations once in awhile so he could think of all the things he should have done differently, how he might have saved a handful more of friends. 

He couldn’t hold on to it any longer.

He didn’t say anything. No one gathered here needed to know about his personal failings, about the ways he still blamed himself. Wasn’t the point to move on? So he just laid it quietly in the casket and stepped back, chewing his lip so the pain could distract him.

Someone else was speaking. Saying more dumb, sentimental shit. Karkat stared straight ahead, not paying attention. Then the caskets were closed, letting out a deep thud like thunder as the lids snapped shut. He was on coffin-lowering duty, which meant he had to snap out of his reprieve to step forward and take a rope in hand. Together with John, Dave, and Jane, they hauled the first casket forward. Hand over hand, they fed the deathbox down into the ground. As they did, Rose played the violin. While he was incredibly grateful for something to break up the silence, it felt like the final cherry on top of this shit sundae. 

He had passed trying to feel sad and contemplative, and now he was desperately trying not to feel anything. Because if one more sentimental, poignant thing happened, he was going to lose his shit.

_ This was a stupid idea,  _ he thought as he let the rope slip through his hands inch by inch.  _ It isn’t actually changing anything. It’s just making me feel terrible.  _

When the first coffin settled onto the ground, Karkat felt the tremor through the rope. One down. One to go. He was going to hold it together. He wasn’t going to cry. 

As they lowered the second coffin, he kept repeating that to himself over and over.

_ Don’t cry. Not here. Don’t cry. Not here. _

Why did humans even have funerals? It was just an excuse to feel miserable. Karkat didn’t need any help feeling miserable. Lately, that was his default emotion.

Another thud. The mass grave of his entire culture, settling into its final resting place. Everything his people had stood for, and it was just a little square in the ground and AW SHIT NOW HE WAS CRYING.

Karkat wasn’t a pretty crier, either. He was a “whole face flushed, nose getting in on the action too” crier, and he could already feel the tear tracks carving embarrassing lines down his face. He looked around to see if it was safe to make a break for it, and locked eyes with Dave. Even though he was still wearing those asinine aviators, Karkat could see a glimmer on his cheeks, that weird clear fluid humans emitted. 

Dave gave him a single, slow nod, as if acknowledging how very cool and sexy it was of Karkat to start crying. Next to him, John was sniffling a little, even though his face was still dry. 

_ Seriously, how did  _ John  _ come out of this not crying? _

He still hadn’t given up his plans of a hasty exit, but instead John pulled him into a rib-crushing hug.

“Go ahead and let it out,” John said, patting him on the head like he was a barkbeast. “You’ll feel better once you do.”

Maybe it was the sheer humiliation of being comforted by John, but that’s when the waterworks really started. He wanted nothing more than to punch John in his dumb face, but the boy was having none of it. 

“You can’t repress stuff forever,” John whispered to him in what was probably supposed to be a soothing manner, but just felt vaguely threatening.

“All right, man, my turn to hug the troll,” Dave said, gently pushing John aside. Dave was at least familiar, and Karkat didn’t mind staining the dumb suit he was wearing. This asshole had given him a red tuxedo to wear to the funeral of his own planet. He deserved what he got. 

“I’m so sick of feeling like shit,” Karkat mumbled into the fabric.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think the feelings part is optional,” John replied “and I don’t think you’re gonna stop feeling like shit any time soon.”

“Then what was even the point?” Karkat snarled, pushing himself out of Dave’s embrace.

“I think the point of a funeral is for everyone to feel like shit together,” Dave replied.

His voice was steady, but Karkat didn’t miss the way the tip of his nose was oh so ever slightly red.

“Well, mission fucking accomplished,” Karkat said, crossing his arms.

Slinging an arm over his shoulder, John asked, “Do you feel any better?”

“No,” Karkat said, “but I think...I think I’m ready to stop thinking about all the what-ifs, all the things I wanted to do differently.”

He stared at the hole in the ground. This time tomorrow, it would be covered with dirt, and all his regrets would be buried six feet under. He was ready for them to stay that way.

“Come on,” he said, taking both of his friends’ hands and pulling them forward, “let’s get out of here.”  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I have social media:  
> [Tumblr](https://i-write-wins-not-tragedies.tumblr.com/)  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/cragboard)


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